Fedora, the emblematic distribution maintained by Red Hat continues to look for ways to improve the experience of its users. In this particular case, it is Hans de Goede , the head of the desktop hardware enablement team who has been working on improving battery life in Linux.
Hasn explains in his presentation several energy management features that could be activated by default in the distributions to save valuable watts. Their tests so far have managed to increase the battery life by almost 30% on a Lenovo ThinkPad T440 running Fedora.
Linux should work without requiring the user to make advanced settings
Depending on who you ask, what laptop you have and what you use, the opinions will vary, but the energy management in Linux is far from perfect and there is always room for improvement.
While there are tools such as TLP that offer advanced energy management in Linux , it is something that only power users usually use, does not even have a graphical interface. Hans de Goede explains that simply offering this kind of thing for more advanced users is not an ideal solution.
In his presentation he explains that Linux should be usable for everyone by default , and the initial experience matters a lot. Something as basic as not draining the computer’s battery should just work.
Then he explains four power management settings that dramatically improve battery life in Fedora :
- Enable automatic suspension for Bluetooth USB drivers (saves roughly 0.4 watts)
- Enable automatic sleep for Intel HDA codecs (now approximately 0.4 watts)
- Enable SATA Aggressive Link Power Management ( ALPM ) by default (saves between 1 and 1.5 watts)
- Enable Self Refresh Panel by default (saves more or less 0.5 watts when available)
De Goede has been doing tests on a Lenovo ThinkPad T440s and the total consumption was down 2 watts , which may sound small, but translated is almost 30% more battery life. Now he is looking for collaborators to test and offer more suggestions that reduce energy consumption.